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You’ve got great ideas. You’ve got an audience. But, without the skills to effectively present yourself and your thoughts, you’ll spend the rest of your career on the sidelines. Leaders inspire action, but it takes more than just great content to gain a following. It’s time to learn how to deliver a powerful presentation, WOW a large group or simply make an impression during a one-on-one discussion.

Step 1: Preparation

Every great presenter has one thing in common – they give, they don’t take. In fact, the best way to give a truly memorable presentation is to turn the tables and shift the focus away from you and onto your audience. In this three-part series, we’ll cover the essential elements of a powerful presentation – prep work, delivery and takeaways. Anyone can be a great presenter. I promise. It just takes practice. Here are a few tips for getting started:

See yourself as a present-er. I know it’s cheesy, but if you think of your presentation as a gift, then you’re much more likely to capture the attention of your audience.

Step away from the computer. Never build your presentation with a PowerPoint template. Your presentation isn’t your PowerPoint deck. The presentation is you – your brain, your ideas, your perspective and your knowledge. Firm up your ideas before you put them into a template.

Know your audience. Who are they and what information do they need? A presentation isn’t about holding people captive for an hour. It’s an opportunity to captivate, inspire, inform, transform or educate.

Identify one big idea. What do you want your audience to take away? Focus on no more than two-to-three key points, but find a repeating theme (one big idea) that pulls it all together.

Use stories to engage your audience. Look for opportunities to incorporate brief stories into your presentation. Don’t be afraid to make it personal – perhaps a story that influenced your viewpoint or position on the subject.

Nail the opening. Audiences are easily distracted. You have to capture their attention quickly. Open with a surprising fact, a related story or a question. Engage them from the get go. Never open with an apology, excuse or long-winded review of your accomplishments.

PowerPoint isn’t the problem – bullet points are. Most PowerPoint presentations could give themselves. They’re packed with too many words, far too many ideas and way too many instructions. If you use PowerPoint, think of the meaning of the slide – what idea are you trying to get across. Find an appropriate photo or graphic as the background and create one sentence that captures the essence of your message. Just one sentence per slide.

As you prepare to give your presentation, ask yourself what you would say if technology failed and it was just you and the audience. Then, visualize each slide along with the key message you’re trying to convey. Practice. Practice. Practice.

Know when to stop. Your audience has an attention span of about 18 minutes. If you have an hour to speak, be sure to create opportunities for audience participation, discussion or brainstorming. If you want your audience to retain the information you’ve presented, they have to participate.

Prepare for objections or questions in advance. Determine whether you’re going to take questions during, between sections or after your presentation. Always repeat the question. Don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know, but I’ll get back to you.”

Step 2: Delivery

There are three things that matter when you’re presenting. Here’s a hint…one of the three is not your PowerPoint deck. They include your non-verbal communication, your voice and your message. Your body language (non-verbal communication) and voice dramatically impact whether or not your audience believes what you have to say. Simply put, the way you deliver your message is what people use to judge your level of expertise, intelligence and trustworthiness. We’ve all watched presentations where we couldn’t get past the speaker’s irritating voice, her pacing or his lack of eye contact.

Let’s start with the most important of the three which is non-verbal communication. By this I mean your posture, your body language and your overall presence. Although difficult, the best way to stand in front of an audience is with your arms at your side. Clasping your hands together is a natural response to fear. In essence, you’re covering or protecting yourself. And, when you clasp your hands, you look nervous (which, of course, you are). When you look nervous, you appear less confident and that impacts your credibility. You can use your hands to make a point or to point at something, but when not in use, they should be at your side. Also, when you move, move with purpose. Don’t rock back and forth and don’t wander aimlessly. Walk over to one side of your audience, make eye contact with someone in the audience, make your point, pause, and then walk to another side of the room and do the same thing. Making eye contact with individuals in your audience creates intimacy. Finally, don’t talk AT your audience, talk to them. Think of your presentation as a conversation. How would you deliver this information to one person over a cup of coffee? A good presenter is able to close the gap between herself and her audience.

The second most important element in your presentation is your voice. By voice, I mean your cadence, how you punctuate your sentences and whether or not you pause. Have you ever listened to a presentation and the speaker’s voice never changed? It didn’t speed up or slow down. It didn’t rise or fall. It was flat, it was frenetic or it was extremely loud throughout the entire presentation. More than likely, you lost interest. Effective presenters raise their voices to accentuate a point. They lower their voices to almost a whisper to draw in their audience. Pausing is one of the most effective tools in the presenter’s arsenal. Every time you pause, you give the audience time to fully absorb what you’ve said. It is truly the only way that you can effectively get your message across. Oftentimes people give too much information. They give it too quickly. They don’t pause. And, then they wonder why no one was able to remember what they said. Pause often and pause after you’ve made an important point. Finally, use your voice to punctuate your sentences. Don’t be afraid to demonstrate a little emotion by raising your voice (or lowering your voice), using your arms or simply pausing to let the full impact of your message reach the audience.

Step 3: Takeaways

The third element in any presentation is “your story.” Your story is your message. Whether you’re giving a PowerPoint presentation or presenting without any props or aids at all, think of your message as a coherent story. Remember — you want the audience to keep their eyes on you (not on your slides or props). Because we read from left to right, stand to the left (audience’s left) of the screen. Your slides simply keep you on track. The shorter the better. Too much data and your audience will get overloaded and ultimately disconnect. Don’t anticipate your next slide. Look at the slide as though you’re seeing it for the first time along with the audience. Slides exist to queue you. They’re not the storyteller. You are. Use your voice to drive home your point.

Don’t read your slide verbatim. Reading puts people to sleep and completely kills all interest in your topic. It undermines your credibility and is the fastest way to drive people from the room.

If presenting a quote, look at the slide together and say something like….read the words of a great leader. If you’re presenting findings or statistics, don’t try to fit everything into one slide. Select one statistic per slide and be creative. For example, instead of showing bar chart of your intern conversion rates over the past five years, show one slide that says “Conversion rates up 75%.”

End with a quote, a story, a challenge or a call to action. If you want to keep people’s attention, make eye contact. If you want to make your story relevant, then use the word “you”. Incorporate statements such as “Have you ever” or “I believe you’ll find” or “What do you think about”. Your presentation isn’t all about you – it’s all about your audience.

Remember, if your body language or your voice gets in the way of your overall message, you’ll lose your audience. Delivery can make or break your presentation so spend as much time on your voice and your non-verbal communication as you do your slide deck.

By now, my clients are sick of hearing me say that they should walk through their own company’s hiring process. I believe it’s the only way to truly understand the candidate experience. So, this year I stopped preaching and decided it was time to take my own advice.

I didn’t apply at my own company. Instead, I went on LinkedIn and Indeed and looked for jobs that I felt were a match for my level of experience and skill set. Over the last 12 months, I’ve applied to 30 positions. Ninety percent of the companies failed to respond. Not an acknowledgement. Not a rejection. Not a word. According to The Talent Board, a non-profit organization responsible for the Candidate Experience Awards (CandE), I’m in good company. Over 70% of online applicants never receive so much as a canned reply. While these statistics should have made me feel better, they didn’t…

Visualization works if you work hard. That’s the thing. You can’t just visualize and go eat a sandwich.Jim Carrey –

Are you able to stop for 30 minutes and truly visualize yourself on a typical day doing the things you love, enjoying the experiences you crave, surrounded by the people who matter? No? You’re not that creative? You say you have no imagination. I say, who writes your dreams?

Not sure what you want? More balance? Better job? Meaningful relationships? Most of us have a rough idea of what we want, but it stops there. When it comes to using our imagination to picture a meaningful life, most of us aim low. When things get bad enough, we may look for a new job or get out of a troublesome relationship. But, we get so caught up with daily responsibilities that we spend the majority of our time and energy yielding to those things that scream the loudest for our attention.

I worked with a woman on a committee who had struggled with cancer for the five years that I knew her. Finally she learned that the cancer had taken over her body and that she had only a few months to live. She was married with two young daughters and knew she wouldn’t be around to help them through the important stages of their lives. So she began videotaping messages about everything from puberty to their dad dating again. She didn’t have the benefit of time. Her diagnosis forced her to clarify what was most important. And, she devoted the remainder of her life to those things. The rest was superfluous. I would imagine that her advice to all of us would be—what are you waiting for?

Visualization became popular in the 1970s as a form of mental skills training to help Soviet athletes compete. Elite athletes in virtually every sport use it today to increase learning, develop problem-solving abilities, build confidence and improve performance. In sports psychology they call it guided imagery, visualization, mental skills training or emotional conditioning. Outside of the sports world, it’s often discounted as touchy-feely nonsense used by the new age or self-help industries.

It’s one thing to visualize the life you want and wait idly while the universe brings it to you. It’s another to be clear about your objectives, develop a plan to achieve them and use visualization to work through the steps you need to take to reach your goal. I’m reminded of joke about the man who for years prayed to God to win the lottery. Finally, God said to the man, “My son, please buy a ticket.”

Just because visualization has been misunderstood doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant outside of the sports world. Science has shown that there is a link between thoughts and behaviors. Also called the mind/body connection, if we visualize the steps we’ll take to accomplish something, when it comes time to act, we have an advantage. We’ve already played out the scenario. We know what we’ll do if we’re distracted. We have a plan in place for the unexpected. Because of our mental practice, our body responds by rote. We already have a mental blueprint of what we’ll do each day to get closer to our goal.

Every year my dear friend Susan Raffetto encourages me to be specific about my goals for the New Year. I learned early on that “happy and healthy” didn’t qualify as goals. She would force me to specifically identify exactly what I meant by happy and precisely what I meant by healthy. Over the years, she set the bar higher. I was asked to write down what actions I would take each day to get closer to my goal. And, she told me that my goals needed to be written down on an index card and displayed so that I would see them every day. At the end of every year, we would review our progress. This year, Susan took it a step further. On vacation with Susan, her daughter and son and law, she had us watch a video about the importance of goal setting while cutting out words and pictures from magazines that we felt best represented what we hoped to achieve.

It was an incredibly imaginative process. Certain words or pictures would catch my attention and I would clip them out. Then, I had to make sense of them. While Susan hoped to live near the beach some day, I realized that I need a healthy dose of city and the country. I give Susan credit for forcing me to creatively identify what’s important. By the end of the day, we had all identified the life we wanted along with the steps we planned to take to get there.

Instead of taping my index card at my desk, I now have it on the front cover of my journal. Every day, I review it. And, I ask myself what I need to do today to get closer to my goal and where I need improvement. I visualize the steps I’ll take (including dealing with potential distractions or set backs). This year, my goal has been to align my behavior with my beliefs. Visualizing situations that test my patience or trigger my nasty side along with a plan for diffusing my natural inclinations has been tremendously helpful.

Susan has never let up. Instead, she just keeps pushing me. Her words are always encouraging and her message is always hopeful. She’s the kind of friend we all wish for and the kind of friend I aspire to become. Of course, talk is cheap. I’ll need to write down exactly what I mean by ‘a friend I aspire to become’ and map out a plan to get there.

1. Have you been able to visualize the life you want?
2. Do you know what steps you need to take to achieve it?
3. Do you take the time each day to track your progress?
4. Do you have a Susan in your life? Are you willing to be a Susan to others?

Last week I watched an interview with Jane Fonda. The 76 year old actress and activist was talking about her role in a new movie entitled This is Where I Leave You. At one point, the discussion turned to mentoring. Jane admitted that when she was young, she had access to so many talented actors, but she never reached out to any of them. She went on to say that in all of her years, only one actress has to come her for advice and council. She seemed disappointed that the life lessons she’s accumulated over her 50+-year career haven’t been shared with more people.

This weekend on CBS Sunday Morning, Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett were talking about their new album. She’s 28 and he’s 88. They’re an unlikely pair and yet they have much in common. They’re both jazz lovers, art lovers, they’re Italian Americans and they only live a block apart in New York. Around Tony, Lady Gaga seems softer and more approachable. It was clear that Tony Bennett had impacted he life. When asked what she brought to Tony, she said, “I hope what I’ve given to Tony is a moment for him to bask in how many people’s lives he’s really changed.”

Earlier in the week, I spoke with my friend who plans to enter politics. She’s 30 years old and wanted to understand what steps she should be taking now to prepare for the journey. She told me that her mother suggested that she contact the retired governor of the state. He agreed to meet and suggested they get together for coffee the very next day. After a two-hour meeting, my friend went away with invaluable information. He gave her advice that could only have come from someone who had been in the trenches. And, he was at the stage in life where he didn’t have anything to protect. This kind of connection could have never been obtained from a company-assigned mentor.

It made me stop and wonder if companies aren’t trying too hard to forge mentoring relationships. I’m not dissing company-sponsored mentoring programs. In fact, in theory, I’m a huge proponent. What I am saying is that a truly meaningful mentoring relationship may be the one you find for yourself. And, the very best mentor may be retired or within a few years of retirement. People at this stage of life are more available, more reflective and appreciate being asked.

Whether you’re a student, a recent graduate or an experienced professional, don’t wait for a mentor to be assigned to you. In my experience, the best mentoring relationships aren’t a result of a program; they’re the result of initiative. No one can give you a meaningful mentoring relationship – you have to make it. So, take a risk and reach out to someone with a world of experience who’s ready to give back to the world.

By now, my clients are sick of hearing me say that they should walk through their own company’s hiring process. I believe it’s the only way to truly understand the candidate experience. So, this year I stopped preaching and decided it was time to take my own advice.

I didn’t apply at my own company. Instead, I went on LinkedIn and Indeed and looked for jobs that I felt were a match for my level of experience and skill set. Over the last 12 months, I’ve applied to 30 positions. Ninety percent of the companies failed to respond. Not an acknowledgement. Not a rejection. Not a word. According to The Talent Board, a non-profit organization responsible for the Candidate Experience Awards (CandE), I’m in good company. Over 70% of online applicants never receive so much as a canned reply. While these statistics should have made me feel better, they didn’t. Statistics are what happen to everyone else. This was my experience. And, it was demoralizing.

I’m not a recent graduate and I’ve been working for myself for 20 years, so my experience and perhaps my marketability are different. But, we’re all human, we all want to be valued and none of us wants to be treated with disrespect or indifference. Applying for a job is a humbling experience so to all the job seekers in the world, I can now honestly say — I feel your pain. Here’s my reaction to the whole thing:

Ouch! No matter how skilled or talented you are, when you go through the job search process, you’re vulnerable. It’s all about being accepted or rejected. Do everything in your power to make the candidate feel appreciated — regardless of whether you hire them or not. Scrutinize every step in the process to see how to make it more streamlined, more individual and more human. Make every word and every action count.

Ugh! Applying for a position feels like dating. I may not want to go to work for your company and you may not want to hire me, but it would be great if we could still be friends. It’s a small world and someday I just might turn out to be your client, your customer or your boss.

Oops! Make the process personal, not institutional. Hiring requirements shouldn’t be set in stone. You’re likely to miss an exceptionally talented candidate if you remain inflexible. There has been enough research on the value of hiring introverts and right-brained thinkers to suggest that organizations should expand their scope. Creative types aren’t just for advertising agencies anymore. And, introverts have finally been vindicated. If you don’t believe me, then read Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain or A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink.

Ha! You can reject me as a potential hire, but I can reject you as a viable brand. I have to admit that my opinion of the organizations that failed to communicate impacted the way I see them. Are they disorganized, discourteous or clueless? If I’m a stockholder, I can’t help but wonder if they’re treating customers the same way. If you’re not paying attention to the candidate experience, you’re wasting company money and you’re tarnishing your corporate and employer brand.

Seriously? Don’t make assumptions based on age or experience level. I recently interviewed over 50 professionals aged 45+ about the job search process. Here’s what they told me. And, by the way, I agree with them:

I don’t want your job. I’ve had it. I just want to contribute and continue to grow in my career.

You may be 20 years my junior, but I still want to learn from you.

I’m happy to share my experience, but I’m open to doing things differently. I’ve lived out of my comfort zone since I graduated from college so don’t assume I’m set in my ways.

I don’t think a task is beneath me just because I did it ten years ago.

I’m less afraid of failure – I’ve failed.

I don’t have mouths to feed except for my own which means my financial requirements aren’t what they used to be. Make me an offer.

I’m more tolerant and compassionate than I was 20 years ago. You have no idea what I’ve seen and done.

I’m all done with crazy – I’ll put up with just about anything, but spare me from mean people.

Maybe it’s time to evaluate more than just the candidate experience. It’s time to broaden your view of what makes a candidate viable. During a focus group several years ago, I asked participants what advice they would offer companies to help them improve the job search process. One candidate said it best, “Put a face with the name and show there’s a heartbeat inside.”

Psychologists have discovered that humans have a limited amount of self-control to exert each day. Self-control isn’t just about cutting out carbs or going to the gym. It’s about the energy we need to make choices, manage fear and frustration, experience change, learn something new or control stress. As employers, every time we require employees to use some level of self-control, we’re depleting their energy. And, when our energy’s gone, we’re less creative, we lose our focus and we lack the drive needed to bounce back from frustration or failure.

It occurs to me that Human Resources should be responsible for harnessing and maintaining human energy. In the world of business, the majority of our energy should be focused on doing our jobs – not filling out reports, attending meetings or responding to hundreds of emails. We’ve all heard companies say that people are their greatest asset and yet most do little to protect their employees from the countless distractions that turn work into drudgery.

Think of how efficient and effective an organization would be if its employees could actually do what they love — their jobs. Recruiting costs would plummet, attrition rates would fall, healthcare costs would decline and productivity and engagement would rise exponentially. I believe HR should look for every opportunity to increase and protect their organization’s greatest asset – human energy. Of course, many employees would say that HR is the biggest self-control abuser. They’re seen as the gatekeepers, policy setters, corporate bureaucrats and time wasters. That’s all the more reason for HR to take on this transformation.

Here’s how to start.

Know your employees: Find out what activities or experiences cause employee dissatisfaction and which are motivational. Start by looking at Herzberg’s Hygiene and Motivational Factors for clues.

Remove roadblocks within HR: Make the decision to reduce non-job-related distractions by 25% within 12 months. Get rid of redundant paperwork, simplify forms and processes and reduce the number of initiatives that require employee time and attention outside of their jobs.

Look beyond HR: Seek out and find those areas within your organization that zap energy. Educate leaders, managers and supervisors on how to maximize energy and reduce employee dissatisfaction. Enact a zero tolerance policy for unnecessary initiatives and programs and build a culture that simply won’t abide employees who create chaos and dissatisfaction.

Increase energy: Be a resource to help your company identify ways to energize and motivate employees. Unless you’re dealing with a sales force, money isn’t a motivator. Pay people competitively and then focus on those things that truly matter. Read Drive by Daniel Pink for more ideas.

Employee engagement results when we reduce the things that deplete our energy and increase the things that energize it. It’s that simple. A single focus – increasing energy – should drive every decision HR makes, every single day. It will reduce choices and illuminate a path that will lead everyone in the department, and ultimately, the organization to something truly important.

Russell Wilson, quarterback of the Super Bowl winning Seahawks has had his detractors. The 5’11’ QB was a third-round-draft-pick whose 2013 salary was less than what his Super Bowl opponent, Peyton Manning, makes per game. He shouldn’t have won the Super Bowl. In fact, he shouldn’t have even played in the Super Bowl.

When asked how he accomplished such a feat, Wilson said that when he was young, his father would tap him on the shoulder and say, “Russ, why not you?” Those four words became his mantra and his message to the Seahawks team.

We’ve all had set backs, we all have detractors, and we all have bouts of self-doubt…

I recently served as interim global events manager for a large corporation and attended conferences all over the world. It was a fascinating experience and what struck me was how many qualified students were in attendance. Many of them had been sent by a company they had interned with or had received a scholarship from a student organization so that they could attend. And, the overwhelming majority were highly qualified, diverse students with undergraduate degrees, master’s, or Ph.Ds. They were all interested in finding a job.

Organizations spend millions of dollars each year at industry conferences. If yours is already planning to set up a booth, I strongly suggest that you consider sending a few university relations team members to staff it. Here’s why:

Marketing openings—Use event marketing opportunities prior to and during the event to drive candidates to the stand for career discussions or to your organization’s career website for further information.

Preselecting candidates—Market to attendees prior to the event and set up interviews during the conference.

Getting started:

Reach out to your business to discuss participation:

Staffing the exhibit stand

Marketing

Sponsorship

Graphics, handouts, and giveaways

Reach out to conference representatives to identify opportunities and restrictions:

Badge scanners

Recruiting restrictions

Marketing and sponsorship opportunities

Establish goals and budget

Determine marketing strategy (before, during, and after event)

Select team (recruiters and hiring managers)

Why should your organization consider you consider sending university relations team members to staff your booth at an industry conference? The heart of recruiting lies in creating a strategy that balances tried and true recruiting methods with less-traditional techniques.

I began my career in public relations and learned the fine art of “packaging” content. My friends still tease me about my ability to take negative information and turn it into a tidy, if not murky, message. “I hit your car” turns into “While the circumstances of our meeting are less than ideal, I’m so glad we had the opportunity to share our contact information.”

I got out of PR as quickly as I could, but I still recognize BS (business-speak) when I hear it. Unfortunately, most companies still use business-speak on their websites, in presentations, and even during one-on-one discussions with students. It’s the number one reason why candidates look outside an organization to find out what’s really going on inside of it.

Recently a new radio station was launched in the Dallas area. It was named the best radio station in the city and when I tuned in, found that the reception was a little dicey. I turn it on occasionally and when I tuned in yesterday, I heard the announcer say, “KHYI – if you can’t hear us, then move!” No apologies, no BS – just the truth, but in a humorous way.

A few years ago, I worked with a company that was in the middle of fall recruiting when their CEO announced that the company was being bought. Recruiters wanted to know if they should discuss the merger and how to respond to student questions. The answer was simple. Yes. Bring it up to students, professors, career services and all of your campus contacts because I can assure you that your competitors will be using it to their advantage. Be honest. Avoid using packaged responses. Tell them what you know and admit what you don’t. Showing a canned video from the CEO about the merger won’t cut it. The best way to deliver difficult information is in person.

Keep in mind that you still need to give students a compelling reason to join your organization. Part of that involves giving them the language they need to explain why they accepted an offer with an organization in transition to their parents and friends. You’ll also need to be prepared to answer the following questions:

-What will change and what will stay the same?
-Will there be a shakeup of leadership?
-Why did the organization decide to merge?
-What’s the upside of joining the organization now?
-If I join the organization, is there a chance I’ll be laid off after the merger?
-Will you be able to keep your job?
-Is there a chance that my position, reporting structure or responsibilities will change after the merger?
-Will my benefits package, compensation and training/development be impacted (negatively or positively)?

Feel free to use humor or to speak candidly about why you’re staying with the organization. But, whatever you do, leave the BS out of it.

It’s week four of college football, classes have begun, and campus recruiting is officially under way. By now, most of you have set your goals, established metrics, determined your strategy, and brought together your campus recruiting teams for a kick-off meeting. Like any other season opener, we feel a sense of anticipation, excitement, and energy. And, following every new beginning, there’s the dreaded middle. The middle is the most critical part of the journey, and yet it receives the least attention.

I encourage you to take the time, now, to motivate your team. The best way to do that is to be very intentional in your communication. Look for little ways to keep the momentum going, offer words of inspiration and gratitude, and remind the team where you’re headed. Go to http://www.naceweb.org/s09182013/recruiting-motivating-team.aspx to see a sample of a tactical communications plan that I created for a large employer.

It’s my experience that the little things are what truly matter to people. Participating on a campus team is time consuming and it’s rare that an employee’s workload is reduced to accommodate the extra hours. But, when you make people feel like part of something significant and acknowledge their contributions, then it’s worth the journey. The heart of recruiting involves keeping an eye on the end result, but never forgetting that the most important part is in the middle.